Copyrighting songs

A few thoughts and bit of experience:

In the states you file for copyright through the government. The fee here is about $35 for a "collection" - which to us is a CD.

Second... don't worry about it. There is so much Christian material floating around, good and bad, that nobody is going to steal your stuff. I'm betting there are about 100 Christian CDs released every day - maybe more. I live in a town of 50,000 and personally know at least a dozen people (including me... "Dan Fulmer" link below) with one "out there."

As far as getting heard - the best thing to do is play live. We play for services and charity events quite a bit. That's where we sell most of our CDs. We send stuff to publishers, but so far no dice.

Best of luck. Remember - it's not about you, so just get out the Word and enjoy the journey.

samhas,

As Kicker said here in the US your music is copyrighted as soon as it it written down, so you can actually say as soon as you composed it in your mind. A couple things will help out if ever a copyright infrigment happenes. you should always put a copyright symbol (c), a c in the center of a circle if you have it on your program, if not what I put up there will do, your name and the date it was completed. I have seen just the year for the date but I put the day and month also.A published copyright, song, can be recorded by anybody. All they have to do is give the publisher an "intent to cover", but an unpublished copyright can not be recorded with out your concent. Therefore I also do my songs this way-----(c) unpublished name date. this does not copyright it as it is already copyrighted as soon as it is wrote down etc. but also someone can not claim they did not know that it was copyrighted material. It makes it harder for them to claim innocents of infringement. Most publishers do not "Register" a copyright until they know that it will be cut. Also when you are cutting a CD of Ten songs that you wrote you can "Register" all ten songs by submitting the intire CD for the same $35 instead of $35 for each song totaling $350. save a lot of money that way.

Sending songs to publishers. Most Publishers, as I have been told, do not take unsolicited songs. The reason being that they have to protect there in house writers from copyright infringement lawsuits. folks have claimed that they sent in a song to a publisher and inever got an answer back from them then they heard a similar song on the radio written by a staff writer. If you do send to a publisher have a piece of paper singned by yourself that you will not hold them reponsible (my wording is wrong but it really means the same thing) and they might be more inclined to listen to it. Or ask them if they listen to unsolicited material.

Another way to go about it is Join a group like NSAI. or taxi or some group like that. I do not know taxi but I do know NSAI. They primarily help you bevelop your song writing skills. They will evaluate one of your songs a month and recormend changes etc. but here is the thing with them. they have pro writers who do the evaluations. If you send your songs to the same evaluater everytime, and all you know them by is a number, they will know when you have written a very good song and will bring to the attention of there own publisher. There is an inside form of help to get on of your songs published.

I went to a songwriting sypossium in Nashville this year and asked one of the speakers there, "Since all the publisher say that if you do not live in Nashville they do not really take you serious, this they had said over and over, So since I am not looking for a staff job writing then there is really no place for me in the songwriting arena, right?" His answer " If you write a great song do not worry it will get around and publishers will be wanting it" Bottom line that I learned was if you use that same evaluater all the time that is the fastest way for word to get around.

Also NSAI has a christian music section that deals with just that.

I hope this info helps.

Also copyright info I got from BMI web site and Harry Fox Agency web site doing my own research.

Richard

As previously mentioned, songs are considered Copyrighted in the States as soon as they are written. Australia is probably similar. The trick is that you have to be able to prove when a song was created in order to challenge someone for copyright infringement. This is why people register songs with the government.

There are a number of other techniques for proving date of creation. The folk-tale "send yourself a copy of the song in the mail and don't open it" method is NOT recommended. However, there are third-party libraries that save copies of your songs and datestamp them so you can prove date of creation through them. These can be useful.

Not that I'm usually into shameless plugs, but Masterwriter is a songwriting software suite (like a rhyming dictionary on Steroids...) that includes a service like this they call Songuard. I've never had to prove date of creation using this service, but it is pretty simple to upload rough recordings of my ideas (and finished mixes) to this service. Gives you the ability to prove date of creation the same day you create! They store this data in at least two differenct physical locations, so there isn't too much chance of data loss, either.

I seem to remember that the first year of Songuard is free when you buy the software.

Might be worth downloading a free trial to find out if the rest of their software is useful to you: Available here

Peace,

I just took the bar exam and am almost a practicing attorney (hopefully.

I haven't studied copyright in a long time, but I did my senior paper on it when I graduated from college. If I remember correctly, to copyright a song, you must do something to reduce to tangible form - ie, record it or write it on paper.

BTW, the "poor man's copyright," (sending your song to yourself through the mail so that its postmarked), doesn't help with anything (just in case someone was wondering about that).